Speaker 1: Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
Speaker 1: three Months Media. Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr Governor Newsom,
Speaker 1: this is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear
Speaker 1: Governor news Problem. To read Jarvis Master's book That Bird
Speaker 1: Has My Wings and Autobiography of an Innocent Man on
Speaker 1: Death Row is to know that his opportunity for success
Speaker 1: in living the American dream was hijacked long before He's
Speaker 1: So much is inhaled his first breath, and tragically, his
Speaker 1: story is anything but an isolated experience. There's a disturbing
Speaker 1: phenomenon in this country in which a population of babies,
Speaker 1: more specifically babies of color, and even more specifically impoverished
Speaker 1: baby boys of color, are pushed out of the womb
Speaker 1: onto a direct pathway to prison. Marian Wright, a woman
Speaker 1: President Emerita and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, who
Speaker 1: identified this trend and coined the phrase cradle to prison pipeline, writes,
Speaker 1: the most dangerous place for a child to try to
Speaker 1: grow up in America is at the intersection of race
Speaker 1: and poverty. Folk, you know, we're losing it and we're
Speaker 1: going backwards in just one or two generations here and
Speaker 1: this in my belief is that this is the worst
Speaker 1: crisis based by the black community sent slavery in that
Speaker 1: incarceration is becoming the new American apartheid. We're feeding poor
Speaker 1: children about the hundreds of thousands each year into this
Speaker 1: pipeline to prison and the dead in lives um and
Speaker 1: um at younger and younger ages um. And we've got
Speaker 1: to stay stopped because it's gonna under the last fifty
Speaker 1: years of progress. Jarvis grew up on the corner of
Speaker 1: race and poverty, but his particular intersection was so perilous
Speaker 1: it spit him right past the cradle the prison pipeline
Speaker 1: straight to the cradle to death row pipeline. We've enlisted
Speaker 1: in Little McCray, a personal mentee of Jarvis and a
Speaker 1: member of the Truth Workers Theater Company, to help us
Speaker 1: tell Jarvis's story in his own words from That Bird
Speaker 1: Has My Wings. It was the late sixties when my mother,
Speaker 1: Cynthia and my stepfather Oldis from among the biggest heroin
Speaker 1: users and deals in Long Beach, California. From the outside,
Speaker 1: the house didn't look like a dope house. My parents
Speaker 1: had lots of money from being in the drug underworld,
Speaker 1: so they could afford a front house that drew no
Speaker 1: suspicion or complaints from the neighbors. The house was a
Speaker 1: place where my parents clientele and whoever they chose to
Speaker 1: bring with them could always, the matter the time of day,
Speaker 1: walk right in and shoot their dope indoors off the streets.
Speaker 1: Many of their customers would nod themselves to sleep right
Speaker 1: there on the living room or bathroom floor and stay
Speaker 1: for hours and hours the house. You know, Heroin was
Speaker 1: a big thing, Jarvis masters. Everyone had those little things
Speaker 1: wrapped around on their arms and had a little uh
Speaker 1: shaving kit. They shot dope in the kitchen, They shot
Speaker 1: open in the living room, they shot dope in the restroom.
Speaker 1: They argued about who was who had more dope in
Speaker 1: the other and dope was like all over the place,
Speaker 1: you know. To avoid the prostitutes and the narrow dwells
Speaker 1: drifting in and out of their home, Jarvis, his older
Speaker 1: sister Charlene, his younger sisters Bertie and Carlette, and baby
Speaker 1: Dean found comfort in the safety of the attic, their
Speaker 1: own private treehouse. We love that attic that at It
Speaker 1: was somewhere where we just love staying at. You know,
Speaker 1: when we when we thought there was gonna be violence downstairs,
Speaker 1: We're going to that attic when we felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: we were too hungry to move around, we'll go up
Speaker 1: in that attic. We would that mean, Uh, it was
Speaker 1: something that we found it. We thought no one in
Speaker 1: that house would walk in that house or leave that house.
Speaker 1: We know that exists. It was a good place for
Speaker 1: us to be when we thought that there was something
Speaker 1: going down in that house that we didn't want to
Speaker 1: be around. So yeah, we we we were living that
Speaker 1: attic and it was a really really good place for us.
Speaker 1: It was here that they could sleep soundly like babies,
Speaker 1: despite their empty stomachs, the lack of electricity, and their filthy,
Speaker 1: ragged clothes. An old white woman lived in the house
Speaker 1: behind us. Every morning she will put food off for us.
Speaker 1: She someone knew that we were being left to starve
Speaker 1: in our own house. We counted on her food sometimes
Speaker 1: when no adult was around the house for days. This
Speaker 1: was the only food we had. The white woman used
Speaker 1: to set food out for us to and that was
Speaker 1: our breakfast. You know, we always thought that's what we
Speaker 1: had coming. You know, we didn't know if she was
Speaker 1: a parent, and she was doing this for my mother.
Speaker 1: We didn't have no idea about what that step was
Speaker 1: going on, but we we survived off of it. Jarvis
Speaker 1: has only one vivid memory of his father, just before
Speaker 1: his stepfather Otis came into the picture, and little McCray continues,
Speaker 1: We were all in the bedroom where Mama had been
Speaker 1: trying to pack our stuff. In the chaotic frenzy, My father,
Speaker 1: whose name I never knew, banked open the front door, yelling,
Speaker 1: where are you, bitch? I'm gonna kill you and your kids.
Speaker 1: Panic stricken, Mama grabbed me, jerked my face up to hers,
Speaker 1: and shook me, saying if anything happens to me, you'd
Speaker 1: take care of your sisters, and she crammed the three
Speaker 1: of us under the bed, one by one, with me
Speaker 1: on the outside. Now I heard my father yelling where
Speaker 1: are those kids, sweat dripping from her face. Her mother
Speaker 1: ran out of the bedroom, hearing the bam bam bam
Speaker 1: about father's fists against her flesh. I knew what happened
Speaker 1: when she got to the next from my sisters, and
Speaker 1: I shook with every blow as if our mother's cries
Speaker 1: or our own and one cries stopped. We can still
Speaker 1: hear the blows. But that wasn't all we heard. The
Speaker 1: furniture was breaking in, glass was flying as the pictures
Speaker 1: fell down from the walls. My father had slammed it
Speaker 1: to us like hurricane. Then with a kick of his foot,
Speaker 1: the bedroom door smashed open, and the storm stood at
Speaker 1: our threast hold From under the bed, while I could
Speaker 1: see was these shoes, the scariest sight I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: I freezed my eyes to catch a glimpse of the
Speaker 1: man who filled the shoes, but his voice interrupted me,
Speaker 1: where you motherfucking kids at. I'm gonna kill you too.
Speaker 1: Thankfully he never thought to look beneath the bed, but
Speaker 1: the violence their mother endured is indelible. Hearing our dreams,
Speaker 1: a neighbor came in and called an ambulance from home.
Speaker 1: After that, I never asked about my father. I've always
Speaker 1: remembered those shoes trying to stump out the light, of
Speaker 1: my mother taking me to paint the house lass of Forever.
Speaker 1: Though only six point five percent of California's are black,
Speaker 1: African Americans make up of the prison population and thirty
Speaker 1: six percent of those condemned to death. The pipeline from
Speaker 1: the intersection of poverty and race to the execution chambers
Speaker 1: in California's state prison is difficult to refute, and along
Speaker 1: the pathway looms largely a highly dysfunctional foster care and
Speaker 1: juvenile justice system. Jarvis and his siblings were removed from
Speaker 1: their mother's care after she was beaten within an inch
Speaker 1: of her life. Though separated from his siblings, Jervis's first
Speaker 1: four years in foster care was a brief, albeit profound
Speaker 1: example of what's right with the system. Dennis and Mamie
Speaker 1: PROCs were elderly, god fearing Christians who first took Jarvis
Speaker 1: into their loving home and under their nurturing wings of
Speaker 1: the Proxies. He writes their faith in the power of
Speaker 1: loving hearts gave me the best years of my childhood,
Speaker 1: somehow erasing many of the horrors I experienced before I
Speaker 1: walked into their lives. Mammy and Dennis was my very
Speaker 1: first foster home, and it was the first foster home.
Speaker 1: It was the first place in my life that I
Speaker 1: saw all the contradictions of where I had came from
Speaker 1: and what I had now. They loved me morning anything
Speaker 1: in the world. You know, I was the only kid,
Speaker 1: you know, I had my whole little bedroom. I had
Speaker 1: a whole huge backyard, a real huge backyard. Uh, the
Speaker 1: red porch, the whole thing. You know, how was the
Speaker 1: darling in the house, the darling in the whole block. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, it was when I first really went to school,
Speaker 1: when I first really got the great first really played
Speaker 1: in the sandbox. Uh, everything you know, and the difference
Speaker 1: between there and where I came from was shocking. It
Speaker 1: was it was like I didn't even want to tell
Speaker 1: the stories after a while, and they didn't make each
Speaker 1: other stories near they didn't need to know the stories.
Speaker 1: Whatever Social services had communicated to them. They understood where
Speaker 1: I had came from, and they were very understanding of
Speaker 1: that life. They didn't show sadness for it because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to wear that off on me. But they
Speaker 1: understood it. They understood it, and they knew their role
Speaker 1: and having this opportunity, you know, to care for uh,
Speaker 1: to care for me. What are some of your Oh man,
Speaker 1: what are my favorite memories? M hmmm, Uh, Christmas is
Speaker 1: and my first bike and my first real day in
Speaker 1: the first grade, in the second grade, and ah made me.
Speaker 1: I loved her so much. Um. What was she like? Uh?
Speaker 1: She was. She was rolled off. She was rolling into
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things. She was your your mother,
Speaker 1: your auntie, your grandmother, uh, your disciplinarian. It was all
Speaker 1: these things, you know, and she would try to be
Speaker 1: all those things to be one kind of person, and
Speaker 1: that's where she made herself into For me. Uh, Dennis
Speaker 1: was the same way. You know. They were older folks.
Speaker 1: They made life very very comfortable for me. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have to do a whole lot. The child
Speaker 1: in me just came rolling back, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: how much hurt and pain I had suffered, um being
Speaker 1: abandoned like that. Hm. You you you tell a story
Speaker 1: about them taking you to church? What was that like? Oh? Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I at first, let me just say this,
Speaker 1: I have never when I first went to church with
Speaker 1: with Mammy and Dennis, I had never ever had seen
Speaker 1: so many black folks in my life. So that was
Speaker 1: the first thing that had just blown me away. You know.
Speaker 1: Mammy was a very very light, loved, appreciative person in
Speaker 1: the church and she always got the best seats. Jennie
Speaker 1: was a deacon, so he always set way up there
Speaker 1: and her friends were They were the most bizarre women
Speaker 1: I never saw in my life. You know. Well, they
Speaker 1: they would have them. They would go through these holy
Speaker 1: ghost moments, you know, where they were, they were where
Speaker 1: they be trying to get the devil out of them,
Speaker 1: you know, and they'd be spinning on the ground and
Speaker 1: sweating and kicking and like she's having a seizure or something.
Speaker 1: And then Mammy would then down and put a fan
Speaker 1: on her face, and I'm thinking, oh God, I got
Speaker 1: you out of here, you know what I mean. They
Speaker 1: didn't call the they to say we need some help
Speaker 1: here where we need some help, We need to get
Speaker 1: this woman off the ground. No, they just get real
Speaker 1: close to her and fanner fan and woman on the
Speaker 1: face like everything she's doing is okay. And I just
Speaker 1: knew that wasn't cool. You know. I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: I hated it. So I gave my life. I gave
Speaker 1: my allowances back just so I don't have to go. Um,
Speaker 1: so you gave your allowance back so you didn't have
Speaker 1: to go to church. Yeah, they said they made it deal.
Speaker 1: And they said if you go to church, which I
Speaker 1: can't remember because they used to say three bits, four bits,
Speaker 1: so they never said fifty said they I was calling bits,
Speaker 1: you know. And at first I was collecting the money,
Speaker 1: you know, coins and everything, and then one morning I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, you guys can have this pack. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going you know. Yeah, I was one of
Speaker 1: the first executive decisions I ever made in my life.
Speaker 1: This is not confident. Did you stay home? And they
Speaker 1: went to church after he gave the money back. The
Speaker 1: people a cross street babysit at me. I was cutting
Speaker 1: their loss was twice as much, it was. That was brilliant, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was cutting their lives with twice as much. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me about how it all came to an end. Well,
Speaker 1: it was the reality that I lived in, and there
Speaker 1: was reality that I learned later. The reality that I
Speaker 1: lived in was that they were getting old and they
Speaker 1: were just not able to keep up with me. It
Speaker 1: just couldn't keep up, you know, and it broke their
Speaker 1: heart to have to let me find me another place.
Speaker 1: But in reality, Mamie was diagnosed with cancer and she
Speaker 1: was dying. And that's the story I never got, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So they Dennis couldn't do it by himself. As soon
Speaker 1: as I left, maybe a month or two after I left,
Speaker 1: she died. I was crushed. That really spuned me in
Speaker 1: a way where I compared everybody to her and no one,
Speaker 1: no one ever got as close to her in my life.
Speaker 1: Then she was. If the proxy showed what's right within
Speaker 1: our foster care system, Earl and Florence du Pomp showed
Speaker 1: quite the opposite. This was the next household. Jarvis was
Speaker 1: shipped too, and it was nothing short of a nightmare.
Speaker 1: He was little more than a paycheck to them, and
Speaker 1: a lot less than an innocent nine year old boy.
Speaker 1: This is what happened to him for confiding his grievances
Speaker 1: to Mamie and Dennis. Florence looked down at my hands
Speaker 1: and told me to wash before I left the house.
Speaker 1: I was at the sink later in when she suddenly
Speaker 1: came up behind me, gripping one of my hands. She
Speaker 1: forced it down into the drain for split second. I
Speaker 1: imagine she thought I dropped the soap and was wanting
Speaker 1: me to retrieve it. And I saw a flip that
Speaker 1: gob was disposal switch. Tips of my fingers felt bits
Speaker 1: of food, bouncing multi role taking blades. I tried to
Speaker 1: put my hand out as Florence kept pushing it down
Speaker 1: for towards the blades. We were like two arm wrestlers.
Speaker 1: I didn't know why Florence was doing this. She was
Speaker 1: not only mean, she had become totally possessed. I could
Speaker 1: feel her evil. That's willing to hear my screams. The
Speaker 1: seconds felt like minutes thanks to the soul. She kept
Speaker 1: losing her grip, which may have been was saved my fingers.
Speaker 1: If you ever, Florence said, spinning into my air, try
Speaker 1: calling somebody else about what goes on in this house.
Speaker 1: You won't have this hand, don't you ever? Ever? She
Speaker 1: seed it through her teeth. Do you hear me? Do you? Yes? Please?
Speaker 1: I won't. I won't, I promise I won't. What the
Speaker 1: trip tell me about him. I've been thinking about this
Speaker 1: for many, many years before I even wrote that book,
Speaker 1: and I realized there so many people in prison, not
Speaker 1: just on death row, but in prison, had known someone
Speaker 1: like that in their younger life. These are the faces
Speaker 1: and names of people we can I can go out
Speaker 1: to any yard and we can talk about for you
Speaker 1: for for for hours. We can compare life experiences with
Speaker 1: these people. We could show our rooms where we was
Speaker 1: hit when we were first hitting, second hit, and third hit,
Speaker 1: you know, and what that did to us when we
Speaker 1: ran away from that, and we ran away from something
Speaker 1: just like that and something just like that again, and
Speaker 1: then we found the most safest place is in some
Speaker 1: juvenile hall with the dormitory that had in the structure
Speaker 1: that we went to school early in the morning. We
Speaker 1: came back and when we got in trouble, we got
Speaker 1: uh thrown into a hole. So the dew Ponts is
Speaker 1: very much in that in that way they stack you up.
Speaker 1: You went in there and there's five or six maybe
Speaker 1: more than that, foster kids, and they're in a very
Speaker 1: small room and there were three bump bets, so two
Speaker 1: bump bets but three three decks. I was put at
Speaker 1: the top. I was the smallest. I can raise my
Speaker 1: arm halfway and I can touch the ceiling. It was
Speaker 1: It was junky, it was stinky. It was just completely
Speaker 1: utterly different from where I had been to me raised
Speaker 1: with Mammy and Dennis. It was completely utterly different. I
Speaker 1: didn't understand it at all. And even though I had
Speaker 1: a little with my mother and we had that experiences
Speaker 1: that I can always think about it and reflect back on,
Speaker 1: this was totally different. This was a machine a systematic
Speaker 1: way of because I'm in wealthy by the by the
Speaker 1: exploitation of kids and a juvenile system that was just
Speaker 1: bursting out the scene with what do we do with
Speaker 1: these kids? So that story is a story that you know,
Speaker 1: has all the environments everything you need to be horrified
Speaker 1: to be that. So many people I know in jail
Speaker 1: and prisons and wherever I've been know they know the
Speaker 1: DuPonts Dupontsism very very It is one of those well
Speaker 1: written books that we all can talk about. I was abused,
Speaker 1: I was whipped, I was thrown, I was dropped out
Speaker 1: of stairs. I was my hand was forced into a
Speaker 1: a garbage disposed machinery type thing, a rotor everything you know. Um,
Speaker 1: I was made to eat food out of garbage as
Speaker 1: a distillery action. And it was the pits. It was
Speaker 1: the pits. And I watched people for the first time
Speaker 1: in my life at that point endure pain. Earlier, I
Speaker 1: didn't know what I knew would being very hungry, starving,
Speaker 1: you know, wanting to eat so bad that there was
Speaker 1: nothing there to eat. I understood that. That's fine. I
Speaker 1: did that, that was cool. I understood it. It was
Speaker 1: something of an experience that Mammy and Dennis told me
Speaker 1: that is not what real people do. Only sick people
Speaker 1: do those things. And your mother and your father and
Speaker 1: their friends were not well. I dug it. I understood it.
Speaker 1: Maybe did I want to believe it so I don't
Speaker 1: have to tell no hard story about my mother. That
Speaker 1: might be the case. But this was systematic. This was
Speaker 1: a design way of treating children. It was a way
Speaker 1: of raising kids that were not your own. Their kids
Speaker 1: lived upstairs, their vituals were flushed. We weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: go up there, and we had to sleep down there. Um.
Speaker 1: It was hell. It was real hell. And someone told
Speaker 1: me how to go to juvenile Hall instead. They showed
Speaker 1: me how to run away just so I can go
Speaker 1: to juvenile Hall instead. So that was the kind of
Speaker 1: place it was. I don't wish that only anyone you know.
Speaker 1: It was not write at all. Jarvis eventually found the
Speaker 1: courage to escape the bondages of the DuPont House of Terror,
Speaker 1: only to find himself at times homeless or bouncing from
Speaker 1: one foster facility to the next, in and out of
Speaker 1: juvenile detention centers, from the notorious McLaren Hall Children's Center
Speaker 1: to the even more notorious boys Town of the Desert.
Speaker 1: McLaren Hall incidentally was shuttered years ago under dark clouds
Speaker 1: of rampant abuse and molestation. Boystown the Desert was a
Speaker 1: turning point in my life. It was because of where
Speaker 1: I went after Boystown, After Boystown where all hell broke blues,
Speaker 1: whereafter DuPonts was very abusive on every level. The academy
Speaker 1: was very structured into a military cadet type school where
Speaker 1: every act of violence was justified, every show of cowardness
Speaker 1: were treated with the most disrespect, and it was a
Speaker 1: challenge to keep up with that stuff. We were forced
Speaker 1: to fight. We was forced to learn how to fight.
Speaker 1: We were forced to run. We were forced to endure pain.
Speaker 1: We were forced to give of pain, to issuate pain,
Speaker 1: to to to enjoy it, to make people feel they
Speaker 1: deserved it. We were programmed to be very very violent people,
Speaker 1: young kids. We challenge each other by putting cigarettes between
Speaker 1: our arms and to see who flinched. Counselors, cadet counselors
Speaker 1: were bet on that, and I was trained to be
Speaker 1: very very violent. That was a turning point in my life.
Speaker 1: That child that was abandoned, that that small house and
Speaker 1: that kid that that that toddler who was with Mami
Speaker 1: and Dennis, that kids that didn't understand why people treated
Speaker 1: people so bad, and the DuPonts, then the peer pressuret
Speaker 1: boys town nothing. None of those compared to the California
Speaker 1: Military Academy. Nothing. We were made to hurt people and
Speaker 1: made to endure pain. I was pretty good at it
Speaker 1: because I kind of looked up to these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: the counselors, you know, who showed me how to kick
Speaker 1: box and showed me how to fight, and showed me
Speaker 1: how to not lose, and show me how to take
Speaker 1: pain by cigarette butts, and who would buy me a
Speaker 1: six pack up Sodas if I can keep my arm
Speaker 1: there the longest. It was a very, very very painful thing.
Speaker 1: I compared its training bulldogs at an early age. It
Speaker 1: was training bulldogs at an early age for me to
Speaker 1: a flick violence. I've seen guys get buffed in their
Speaker 1: head with sticks and they did not had cried, you know,
Speaker 1: and they didn't if they had a has to have
Speaker 1: a pistol that was shut up everybody in there. Then
Speaker 1: I see that a lot when I think about some
Speaker 1: of the virus I see today. I was taught violence
Speaker 1: and then and I don't never think I I really
Speaker 1: came back from that. In my early age teenage years,
Speaker 1: I learned almost everything that I needed to learn to
Speaker 1: defend myself, and I got pretty good at it. Just
Speaker 1: something about me just locked up, just locked in, you know.
Speaker 1: It was something about me that just said that you
Speaker 1: on your own. Now, you know, when you were the way,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure no one hurts you when you
Speaker 1: any other place you go to, you know, make sure
Speaker 1: no one hurts you. You're not going to depend on
Speaker 1: asking people are telling on anyone or you know this
Speaker 1: guy he hit me in the face. There was none
Speaker 1: of that, no more. There was none of that. And
Speaker 1: I met all these guys in prison almost you know,
Speaker 1: this is what blows me and where even when I
Speaker 1: think about it today, it was based on your performance
Speaker 1: in the academy that reflected who you were when you
Speaker 1: got to prison. If you were week depended upon someone else,
Speaker 1: scared taking advantage of in the academy, you was expected
Speaker 1: to be that same person when you got to prison,
Speaker 1: and people made you that same person when you got
Speaker 1: the prison got stabbed because they were that same person.
Speaker 1: So that would make me strong that would make me survive,
Speaker 1: because my track record as a kid really reflected everywhere
Speaker 1: else I've been. Even today, I know, I know that
Speaker 1: young kids who are in June all they're trying to
Speaker 1: get out of for who they were when they were
Speaker 1: in June the hall when they come to prison, because
Speaker 1: the history follows you. Those life experiences as children in
Speaker 1: foster homes, boys homes, champs has follow us where we
Speaker 1: go if we're going in the direction of prisons. Dear
Speaker 1: Governor Newsome, I want to tell you about a man
Speaker 1: I've come to know, someone extraordinary. His name is Jarvis j. Masters.
Speaker 1: He inspires people and helps them. Indeed, he's changed lives
Speaker 1: and save them. But what's most remarkable is that Jarvis
Speaker 1: has done this while being incarcerated on death row in
Speaker 1: San Quentin. He's there because he was framed for a
Speaker 1: crime he didn't commit. There's in controvertible evidence to prove this.
Speaker 1: But in spite of that, he's been on death row
Speaker 1: for three decades, including twenty two years in solitary confinement.
Speaker 1: Even amid that injustice and in those appalling conditions, he's
Speaker 1: been a force for good. My name is David Chef.
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist who has written about social justice, politics,
Speaker 1: mental health, and many other issues, most recently folk sing
Speaker 1: on our nation's drug use and addiction crises. In addition,
Speaker 1: I'm in the final stages of a book I've been
Speaker 1: working on for three years, a biography of masters entitled
Speaker 1: The Buddhist on Death Row. When I met David Scheff,
Speaker 1: he convinced me, with very few words that that I
Speaker 1: had a story. It's an extraordinary story. And when I
Speaker 1: hope and believe will enlighten and inspire. She did not
Speaker 1: just come here one day in this start tape of
Speaker 1: me and that was it. She came here consistently going
Speaker 1: over things, going back over the finding out things, wondering
Speaker 1: about this. I mean, he is a real biographer. I
Speaker 1: suspect that he has at least fifty takes, you know,
Speaker 1: two hundred, three hundred, maybe fourred of tapes. In the book,
Speaker 1: I chronicled Jarvis's journey. He had a difficult childhood characterized
Speaker 1: by neglect and physical abuse, and as he fully admits,
Speaker 1: he committed crimes when he was a teenager. Jarvis has
Speaker 1: never killed. I'll say that again. He has never are killed,
Speaker 1: but he's open about the crimes he did commit, and
Speaker 1: he's repeatedly described his remorse. When Jarvis was incarcerated in
Speaker 1: San Quentin, it was different than it is now. A
Speaker 1: former warden described it to me as a war zone.
Speaker 1: Jarvis was thrown into that war zone when he was
Speaker 1: still an adolescent. He was only nineteen. Four years later,
Speaker 1: a terrible crime was committed. A correctional officer was murdered.
Speaker 1: Jarvis wasn't involved with the murder, but he was framed.
Speaker 1: He couldn't defend himself. He would have been murdered himself
Speaker 1: if he had. As a result, Jarvis was condemned and
Speaker 1: sentenced to death. Tragically, we've all heard similar stories about
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions, innocent men being locked up in our nation's prisons.
Speaker 1: Far too many languish there for the remainder of their lives,
Speaker 1: and many in that situation grow angry and bitter, and
Speaker 1: many have killed themselves. Jarvis went another way. As I said,
Speaker 1: he has changed lives and saved them. Jarvis has taught
Speaker 1: so called troubled teenagers non violence and challenged them to
Speaker 1: rethink their definitions of man hood. He's taught them that
Speaker 1: being a man isn't what they had been taught someone cold,
Speaker 1: hard stock and violent, but instead is someone conscientious, open
Speaker 1: and loving, a good father and friend, a citizen who
Speaker 1: contributes to his or horror community. A condemned prisoner told
Speaker 1: me about Jervis's breaking in viable prison codes, intervening in
Speaker 1: conflicts on the yard that would have led to violence,
Speaker 1: and helping inmates who are vulnerable to attack even more improbable.
Speaker 1: In my research, I found examples of Jarvis's preventing murder
Speaker 1: of prisoners, and in two cases I've documented preventing the
Speaker 1: murder of correctional officers. I am now writing you to
Speaker 1: look to ask you to look into Jarvis's case and
Speaker 1: right a terrible wrong that has been done to him.
Speaker 1: He has talked to me about one of the things
Speaker 1: he would do he's freed from San Quentin. He would
Speaker 1: return to the kinds of neighborhoods in which he grew
Speaker 1: up to teach California's lost children. He guide and mentor
Speaker 1: kids and teach them to value themselves and live authentically,
Speaker 1: with the aim of helping them avoid gangs, drugs, and violence.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for listening, and I want
Speaker 1: to send my respect David Chef. I'm left side you
Speaker 1: know this opportunity to have someone like him sit down
Speaker 1: for all these as, to spend this time with me
Speaker 1: answer right about my life. The system taught Jarvis how
Speaker 1: to fight, and while still a boy, defined for him
Speaker 1: what it meant to be a man, fierce, angry and proud.
Speaker 1: There were times when he tried to rise above and
Speaker 1: escape the cradle to prison pipeline, but the gravitational pull
Speaker 1: was too strong to resist. Next week, we'll hear directly
Speaker 1: from Jarvis about the crimes he committed the first put
Speaker 1: in behind bars. In we'll hear what manhood meant to
Speaker 1: him then, and what manhood means to him now, and
Speaker 1: how that transformation came to be. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: and produced by Donni Fazzari and myself, Corny Cole. Our
Speaker 1: theme song sentenced his compliments of the band Stick Figure
Speaker 1: from their album Set in Stone. Excerpts from Jarvis's memoir
Speaker 1: That Bird Has My Wings, a Harper One publication, were
Speaker 1: read by n Low McCrae, a member of the Truth
Speaker 1: Worker Theater Company. To learn more about the outstanding work
Speaker 1: they do, please visit truth Worker dot com. Stu Sternbach
Speaker 1: has composed the original music. Nate Dufort did the sound design.
Speaker 1: Visit free Jarvis dot org to find out more about
Speaker 1: Jarvis's case and to sign your name to our Dear
Speaker 1: Governor Newsom petition. And if you have questions for Jarvis,
Speaker 1: please leave a message on our hotline at two zero
Speaker 1: one nine zero three thirty five seventy five. That's two
Speaker 1: zero one nine zero three thirty five seventy five. And
Speaker 1: you can also preorder David Chef's biography about Jarvis, the
Speaker 1: Buddhist on Death Row, How One Man Found Light in
Speaker 1: the Darkest Place. Dear Governor Newsom is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Media and three Months Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H m hm